7 On depictive secondary predicates in Laz SILVIA KUTSCHER AND N. SEVIM GENÇ 7.1 Introduction This chapter deals with morphosyntactic, semantic, and prosodic characteristics of depictive secondary predication in Laz. We show that Laz adjunct expressions generally cannot be divided into depictive and adverbial constructions on the basis of their morphosyntactic properties. We also deal with some prosodic characteristics o f adjuncts expressing manner and state, and discuss to what extent depictive expressions may be dehmited from manner adverbiais on the grounds o f intonational pattems. Conceming the semantic interpretation of adjuncts in Laz, we argue that they are vague with respect to participant- or event-oriented readings. Laz clause-level adjuncts thus are general adjunct constructions in the terminology proposed in the introduction to this volume. An interesting exception to this generalization are distributive numeral expressions, which can be argued to be a genuine depictive construction. A sister language of Georgian, spoken on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea, Laz is the only member of the South Caucasian family which is spoken primarily outside Georgia. The vast majority o f its Speakers live in Turkey and are bilingual. An increasing number o f young Laz, however, are fluent only in Turkish. In addition, native Speakers of Laz restrict using their mother tongue to private Communications amongst ftiends and family members. The variety of Laz discussed here is the one spoken in the city of Ardeçen and the villages of the Ardeçen region. Although this dialect (Arde§en-Laz) differs from other Laz varieties with respect to the case-marking system (see Kutscher 2001: ch. 5), it is similar to the other dialects in that no variant o f Laz exhibits The authors would like to thank Eva Schultze-Bemdt, Nikolaus Himmelmann, and Katrin Lehmann for numerous comments on previous versions of this chapter, and Britt Temme for brushing up our English. We also are grateiul to the patience and helpfulness of the Laz Speakers in the region of Ardeçen and in Germany, who have supported our work for several years now. 238 S. Kutscher and N. Sevim Genç NP internal agreement or an adverbialis case, in contrast to the Georgian varieties discussed by Boeder (Ch. 6, this volume). The data presented in this chapter consist of utterances taken from a corpus of spoken texts recorded on location in Turkey. Some texts from this corpus have been published in Wodarg (1995) and Kutscher and Genç (1998). Examples from these publications are marked with W (for Wodarg) and K/G (for Kutscher and Genç) followed by an abbreviated title of the source text and the reference number of the intonation unit (e.g. K/G murun3xi 003). Other examples are from our research on positional verbs elicited with Stim­ uli of the Language and Cognition Group of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. These are marked ‘Posif. Examples not marked for their source have been elicited for the purposes of this article. The structure of the chapter is as follows. Section 7.2 gives a short overview of Laz basic clause structure. Section 7.3 focuses on how NP-internal modifiers can be delimited from adjuncts. Section 7.4 concerns participant- oriented and event-oriented manner expressions, and gives an overview on their segmentai and distributional characteristics (7.4.1) followed by a few remarks on prosodic communalities and differences (7.4.2). Section 5 deals with participant-oriented and event-oriented uses o f adjuncts in instrumental case (7.5.1), motative case (7.5.2), and locational nominais (7.5.3). Section 7.6 argues that distributive numerais are expressed by a genuine depictive con- struction in Laz. Section 7.7 deals with expressions of role and life stage, which in Laz are biclausal in nature. Section 7.8 concludes. 7.2 Morphosyntactic essentials Laz is basically an SOV language, exhibiting the categories case and number in nominal expressions and a rieh inventory of verbal categories with up to ten different morphological slots to be filled in the predicate (see Kutscher 2001: ch. 1). Predicates in Laz are head-marking— i.e. depending on the valence of the verb, verbal inflection is mono- or polypersonal. With polypersonal verbs the finite verb inflects for both actor and undergoer as in (1). (1) cetnçam1 hit:[2>l]sG.PRS ‘You beat me.’ 1 Examples are written in the Lazoglu/Feurstein orthography introduced to the Laz community in Turkey in 1984. It deviates from the Caucasianists’ transcription .in the following graphemes (<Laz=Caucasianist>): <ç=c>, <c=J>, <k=k>, <p=p>, <ç=s>, <t=t>, <3=c>, <3=c>. On depictive secondary predicates in Laz 239 Laz is an active language (Klimov 1974), i.e. monopersonal verbs subdivide into two classes, depending on whether the verb takes a Controlling or non-controlling single core argument. Controlling single core argu- ments are marked as actor on the predicate, cf. the first person marker b- in (2a). Non-controlling single core arguments are marked as undergoer, cf. the first person marker m- in (2b). This is indicated by an arrow (> ) in the gloss. (2) a. bulur gO aSG.PRS ‘I go.’ b. maçinden sneeze:>isG.PRS ‘I sneeze.’ Note that information on person and number in Laz predicates is not marked by a single prefix but rather results from the interaction of prefixes and suffixes. These are portmanteau forms coding tense/aspect/mood simultaneously (see Mattissen 1995).2 Argument NPs are always non-obligatory and often are omitted in dis- course. If present, all argument NPs in Ardefen-Laz are unmarked for case, as opposed to other Laz dialects. This holds for the actors of polypersonal predicates (3a, b), primary and secondary objects (3b), and for the single core argument of monopersonal inactive predicates (3c). (3) a. baba pencere kosuy father window clean:[3>3]sG.PRS ‘Father wipes the window.’ b. nana baba bere meçay rnother father child give:[3>3]sG.PRS ‘Mothef gives the child to Father.’ c. biçi afkurinen boy be_afraid:>3SG.PRS ‘The boy is affaid.’ 2 Person-marking in the glosses indudes information on the macro-roles actor and undergoer. Undergoers are marked with a preceding angled bracket, > . In polypersonal predicates this bracket is to be read as ‘acts on’. In monòpersonal-inactive predicates, it marks the single core argument as a non-controlling argument. The single core argument of monopersonal active predicates is an actor and has no special marking. 240 S. Kutscher and N. Sevim Genç Adjuncts, e.g. goals (4a) or instruments (4b) take oblique case-marking. (4) a. yecekuleça eçkaftaten (...) yecekule-ça eçka-ftaten ‘place name’-MOT up-go:iPL.FUT.PFV ‘We went up to yecekule.’ (K/G gecekule 005) b. 3 arite goçxu; çkomu V 3ari-te goçxu çkomu water-iNS cleanysG.PST.PFV eatysG.PST.PFV ‘He cleaned it with water and ate it.’ (K/G proyoni 031) Expressions of location (5a) or time (5b), however, are always unmarked for case. (5) a. Trabzoni ya (0.3) xolo ieyyare kocepxedi Trabzoni ya xolo teyyare ko-ce-pxedi Trabzon q u o t again plane EMPH-down-sitasG.psT.PFv ‘He said: “In Trabzon I sat down in an airplane once again”.’ (K/G Ferat dayi 1 002/3) b. a tnapxa ndya; (0.1) xvala pucepe a mapxa ndya xvala puci-pe one sunny day alone cow-pl keçkebuçvi \ k-eçkebuçvi EMPH-up: lead:[x>3]sG.PST.PFv ‘One sunny day I brought the cows up alone.’ (W Kuhtext 004) Having set out the major characteristics of Laz clause structure, in the foüowing sections we will turn to the nature of participant-oriented adjunct constructions beginning with delimiting unmarked adjuncts from NP-internal modifiers. 7.3 Participant-oriented adjuncts vs. NP-intemal modifiers In contrast to Georgian (see Boeder, Ch. 6, this volume), Laz NPs only inflect on the last element of the phrase and do not exhibit NP-internal agreement, 3 In transcripts of audio data intonational units are deliraited as follows: \ = final intonation, i.e. pitch drops to the base line;; = medial intonation, i.e. pitch ends in mid-range either level or slightly falling; / = progredient intonation, i.e. final pitch is dearly rising. A number in brackets, e.g. (0.1), indicates the length of a pause in seconds. On depictive secondary predicates in Laz 241 as (6) illustrates (see Kutscher 2001: ch. 2 for details). (6) (...) pasiari lempte kélébuçi / pasiari lemçi-te ko-elebuçi rusty needle-iNs EMPH-sew:[i>3]sG.PST.PFV ‘I sew it together with a rusty needle.’ (K/G korme 011) In (6) the instrument-NP pasiari lempte ‘with a rusty needle’ is case marked only on the semantic nucleus (lemçi ‘needle’) o f the NP, whereas the attribute pasiari ‘rusty’ is a bare adjective stem. The last lexical element of an NP can either be the semantic nucleus (as in (6)) or a possessive pronoun (cf. (7)). (7) pasiari lemçi çkimi-te kélébuçi pasiari lemçi çkimi-te ko-elebuçi rusty needle p o s s .is g - in s EMPH-sew:[i>3]sG.PST.PFv ‘I sew together it with my rusty needle.’ Hence, the right border of an NP can clearly be identified by inserting a possessive pronoun into the phrase. NP-internal modifiers can thus be formally distinguished from participant-oriented adjuncts following the NP. Compare (8a) with (8b). (8) a. tu ja cari çkimi bimxor hot bread/meal p o s s .is g eatusG.PRS ‘I eat my hot meal.’ b. cari çkimi tuSa bimxor bread/meal p o s s.is g hot eatusG.PRS ‘I eat m y meal hot.’ In (8a) the adjective tusa ‘hot’ is part of the NP and functions as an NP-internal modifier to its head noun.